Hanging our Wedding Puzzle.....3 years later!

When we were planning our wedding, we wanted a unique guest book, not the traditional book and pen.  I did a lot of internet searching and tried coming up with different ideas, but my husband didn't really light up on anything.  I finally found customized puzzles, DING DING DING!  He was intrigued!  We took one of our engagement photos and turned it into a cartoon print.  We chose our size (HUGE) and sent off the picture!

The puzzle is a 5-layer birch wood jigsaw puzzle.  The whole thing is hand-cut, with 2 special pieces in the center; 2 hearts that inter-lock.  When it finally arrived we wanted to put it together!  It also came with 3 special pens to be used for our guests to write messages on the back of the pieces.

When we dropped off our stuff to the reception venue, our coordinator was very impressed and loved it!  They set up an entire separate table for it inside our room.

We got so many compliments on it during and after our wedding, everyone had fun leaving us messages and once pieces were signed, it started getting put together.

After the wedding, we went through and read all the messages, it was awesome.  But then we looked at each other and said "now what?".  We found a custom framing shop and put it together and transported it between 2 pieces of cardboard.  The lady at the frame shop was amazed.  She made a beautiful custom frame for us so we could see both sides.  I will tell you, this was THE MOST expensive guest book ever!

So it sat in our apartment for the next 6 months wrapped in kraft paper.  When we were house hunting, and we found our house, it had the most perfect spot for this to be put.  It had to be spot that you could see both sides otherwise, what would be the point?

It's now been 2 1/2 years since we bought our house and it's still not up, but it's getting close!  Because of it's size and weight, it definitely needs to be secured and supported well.  So I had this idea that I would make a base out of a 2x4.  Well 1 piece wasn't tall enough, but 2 gave me the height I needed.  I cut them to length and sanded off the rough spots real quick because ultimately, the 2x4s will be covered up by something else.  I first screwed in the bottom piece to the window frame since I didn't have screws long enough to go through both pieces and the frame.  Once the bottom one was secured, I put the 2nd one on top of it, and screwed that one to the first one.  It does not move!  I also picked up a pair of hooks to attach the chains to.  So I drilled a hole and twisted in the hooks.  Kind of stuck at this point for right now since the rest is probably a 2 person job.  This is the most progress in 3 years though!